Electronic commerce (e-commerce) includes buying and selling of products or services over the Internet or other electronic networks. E-commerce can be conducted entirely electronically (e.g., for virtual items such as access to premium content on a website) or electronically and physically (e.g., for transportation of physical items). Almost all big retailers have an e-commerce presence on the World Wide Web (e.g., business-to-consumer or B2C) as do entities that engage in business-to-business (B2B) transactions.
A typical transaction involves some exchange of information to facilitate financing or payment. Some transactions schemes rely on services such as VERISIGN® Internet infrastructure services (Mountain View, Calif.) to secure communications between a client and a server. Further, such services have been integrated with client-side trusted platform modules (TPMs). For example, TPMs manufactured by Infineon Technologies AG (Munich, Germany) are configured to carry a VERISIGN® certificate (e.g., which may be used to verify a SSL Root CA Certificate). By placing a SSL Root CA Certificate or a reference to it inside a TPM, it becomes difficult for malware to modify or delete the certificate.
Such advances in security aim to prompt more people to trust and perform electronic financial transactions. As described herein, various exemplary technologies readily provide for audits of electronic financial transactions.